Food for Thought: Landfills in C:S are Nothingburgers (compared to the real thing)

[Seminole Wolf]

TLDR: This is long, but I hope it's worth it, just for the conversation.

So I was curious about how solid waste disposal in the game compares to what we humans do about it in real life. Yep, we're talking poop today, people!

So first off, have you ever driven by a major metropolitan landfill complex? Or have you even looked at any of them on a map? Well I have, and I've also done some strategic Googling on the subject. I'm no expert, but I'll share with you what I've learned in the last oh...hour or so.

There's no getting around it, landfills are scary-huge! And they are scary-numerous too!

The average landfill in the US is about 600 acres, which is about 93% of a square mile. For those of you on the metric system, a square mile is about 2.6 square kilometers, which is slightly larger than a "city square" that you can buy in Cities:Skylines.

I measured the outer edges of several landfills in real life using Google Maps' satellite view. For the purpose of this exercise, I just used the measurement tool to outline the road or other features that serve as borders surrounding these landfills.

My measurements did include the land used for offices and transportation associated with that landfill's operation, but I did not include any nearby or bordering "greenspace areas", such as open fields, forest-planted areas, marinas, rivers, or bodies of water.

But these things DO exist, and they are significant in size and visibility. I'm going to guess that these features are planned into an overall landfill/solid waste strategy for an area, and that maybe fully half or more of the land used is for these green spaces.

I also noticed a number of things such as apartment complexes, schools, and other types of land being used RIGHT NEXT TO a landfill. This seems to be common.

Some specifics:

Dade Landfill (295 acres) and Dade South Landfill (260 acres). Together these landfills total Google's average. Both are near near Miami, FL.

There's a smaller landfill located near Chicago, called "River Bend Landfill". I'm going to guess it's about 200 acres in size, but the surrounding land is composed of a large area of greenspace and what appear to be closed landfills, no longer actively accepting waste. That larger area is 12 times as big as River Bend itself!

The "Big Mama" of all landfills has got to be Freshkills on Staten Island. It was 2,200 acres, or about the area of five city "squares" that you can purchase in Cities:Skylines. Wikipedia article here[en.wikipedia.org].

So now, let's talk about Cities:Skylines' implementation of landfills.

According to
this post , one city "square" (what you buy when you achieve milestones) is 2km squared. That's about 494 acres, which is just about the size of a small landfill in real life.

An individual "tile", or "chicklet" in the game is about 8 meters X 8 meters. That's 2/1000ths of an acre, if you're keeping track. The 6 X 10 chicklet size of the in-game "landfill" is .018 acres. My house sits on .25 acres! This isn't even the size of a small auto parts graveyard, let alone being anywhere near the size it needs to be for waste collection.

I'm NOT proposing that we make landfills take up a whole "city square", or 5 squares like Freshkills would have required. That would ruin game play. But the current size of the landfill asset in the base game (or in the Workshop) are too small to be of any real use for anything other than a junk yard or waste transfer station.

C:S lets us "empty" landfills and burn trash in incinerators. Most of us know that this isn't done in real life. Oh sure, we all have cities now without any landfills because we've burned all of that trash, emptied out the landfills, and deleted them. Now, the Freshkills landfill on Staten Island is actually being "reclaimed" and will be used for recreation and other things. But that trash is not being burned. Instead, "Freshkills Park" will be built ATOP the old landfill mounds.

In real life, we can't burn "everything". Here in 2022, our US landfills take up to 50% of all solid waste, while about 33% is recycled and about 13% is incinerated. There's a missing 5% there, but those are the numbers I was able to find, and they match reality better than allowing the burning of 100% of trash.

Based on my cursory research, here's what we do in real life (at least in the US). First, we create an impermeable base for a landfill. Next, we fill landfill cells to their maximum allowed amount, which could take decades. Then we cover it over. We landscape it and the surrounding areas, and we perform post-closure processing. Some years later, Post-closure is "certified" and the landfill is considered "closed". Throughout that lifecycle, we are looking for, securing, preparing, and opening new landfill sites all the time.

I would say that solid waste management in C:S is probably about 20% accurate with real life. That's not nothing, and I'm grateful for what we DO have. I also know that there's no way we could get it to 100% realistic and still have a playable game.

But might it be possible to bring C:S closer to 50-60% accurate with real life? Maybe by allowing for the creation of a waste management "district"? It's just a thought, but I believe that such a district could actually be done very well in-game. Just by breaking a landfill's lifecycle into "phases". For example, Phase 1: "prepare the ground" and "set aside green space". Phase 2: Create buildings and add to the landfill. Phase 3: Landfill is full; close the site. And Phase 4: Make it a park. Maybe the Park Life and nature reserve DLCs could be leveraged here?

Well, that's quite a lot to chew on for now and I doubt very much that Colossal Order might even be interested in doing a DLC or other solution to this; it would be a huge project for sure.

But I'd be interested in having a conversation about this topic. Thanks in advance!

[Imhotep]

In my city of around 11,000 population, the garbage area (in the bottom-right) is a significant proportion of land use:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2714189025

I'm playing on Hard mode, though, where the reduction in funds, and slower progress to reach milestones that unlock things like incinerator, make garbage and corpse disposal bigger issues to deal with.

I'd agree that garbage in the game would be better handled through painting areas, like with Industries, Parklife and Campus DLCs. The same could be done for painting cemeteries. It would probably need to be part of a larger DLC which included other stuff, but I'd agree it would be better to have single rubbish tip areas of any shape or size, rather than a dozen small regular-shaped ones.

[Seminole Wolf]

Originally posted by Imhotep:

In my city of around 11,000 population, the garbage area (in the bottom-right) is a significant proportion of land use:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2714189025

I'm playing on Hard mode, though, where the reduction in funds, and slower progress to reach milestones that unlock things like incinerator, make garbage and corpse disposal bigger issues to deal with.

I'd agree that garbage in the game would be better handled through painting areas, like with Industries, Parklife and Campus DLCs. The same could be done for painting cemeteries. It would probably need to be part of a larger DLC which included other stuff, but I'd agree it would be better to have single rubbish tip areas of any shape or size, rather than a dozen small regular-shaped ones.

That's a very good point that you raise, and that is that landfills (and yes, you're right, cemeteries too) are not only placed in rectangular shapes on flat ground. Instead, they're made to mesh in with the topography.

And for cemeteries, we also have mausoleums and those massive, massive mountainside facilities in many Asian places around the world. I read about those some time ago. In some countries, you have to pay a "rental fee" and you only get 5 or 6 years of use. After that, they remove your bones and cremate you anyway.

[Imhotep]

Originally posted by Seminole Wolf:

It's just a thought, but I believe that such a district could actually be done very well in-game. Just by breaking a landfill's lifecycle into "phases". For example, Phase 1: "prepare the ground" and "set aside green space". Phase 2: Create buildings and add to the landfill. Phase 3: Landfill is full; close the site. And Phase 4: Make it a park. Maybe the Park Life and nature reserve DLCs could be leveraged here?

I don't think the player should be limited by what they could build on reclaimed waste disposal land for gameplay reasons.

The reclamation process can be handled by existing game mechanics. It would take a while to empty a big waste disposal area, and it could leave pollution in the ground, as it does already in the game, which takes time to go away.

[Tsubame ⭐]

Almost everything in the game, except roads and rails that are too wide, and small RICO lots, is undersized, not just landfills.

If you care about that, then the key is to decorate using assets accordingly.

[snowflitzer]

Yeah, but here is the problem with landfills even in real life. I know in Switzerland all landfills got banned on the 1st January 2000.
We need to get ride of our waste in good way. I do like the new waste plants we have in sunset harbour.
Yes, if they are serious they can filter out everything too.
Sooner or later all landfills will be closed if we want to get real with climate change

I agree with Tsubame, not everything in CS can be replicated as it is in RL, but there is decorating or do it yourself. :)

[WhiteKnight77]

Here in the US, it is cheaper to bury trash/solid waste (not poo, at least until it is treated and reduced to a sludge). There are places that use trash to generate power (PERC in Maine and Newport News used to incinerate trash) and others just recycle paper products.

There are places that will make parks out of former landfills such as Mt. Trashmore off Interstate 264 (used to be just VA 44) in Va. Beach.

Still, much has changed with solid waste (garbage). Once what was buried in just open pits now is buried in lined pits and with flares to burn off methane gasses. And, until it becomes cheaper to recycle everything, trash will continue to be buried. One also needs to remember as well, China stopped buying/taking trash from the US years ago, which has not helped reduce the need for landfills.

As a society, we really do need to wean ourselves off of plastics. That would help on the need for landfill space.

[Detective Dan]

just gather our trash, put it on a rocket and send it to space. We'll worry about it in a thousand years

[ThisHero]

landfills are serviced by waste management facilities automatically in game. granted, this functionality requires the sunset harbor dlc, but it is there.

i do not think incinerators function the same.

[snowflitzer]

Originally posted by Lancia 037:

just gather our trash, put it on a rocket and send it to space. We'll worry about it in a thousand years

Does exist:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=413337739

[Ripp]

Have you looked up lately? Near Earth Space at least is full of trash already. Bits and pieces of every thing we've shot up and left there. All of it zipping around at 14,000 miles an hour.

Have you ever been hit by a bug while riding a bike down the highway at 60 miles an hour? Have you ever seen what happens to a cars windshield when a rock gets kicked up by a truck? Now think about something like a dime traveling at near 4 miles a second then think about a few million dimes whipping around in every direction in the dark.

And now you want to come along talking about using a multi billion dollar dumper to shoot a couple trillion more dimes, soup cans, hub caps, broken windows, Used TV's, old cars, and what ever else up there?

Sure... Why Not?

[MessengerOfRage]

I have to agree with Tzubame and Snowflitzer, decorate it until it fits.

It helps if you look at the game pices as building blocks, not as finished enterprises.
In your example it's better to see the games landfill as equivalent of a real landfills different pits.
the game gives you landfill-pits, fences, roads, decals,.... to build your landfill-site.

like in this example:
I found the games harbour severly lacking in size and decoration so I build my own cargo harbour.
the one crane in the lower left, that one without anchored ship, is a working workshop harbour that accepts goods by ship.
the giant white roof in the lower right hides a working cargo rail connection.
everything else is decoration.
edit: now the correct link
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2612452088

[BettyB]

@ Coookyman

Did you post the right link?

[MessengerOfRage]

Originally posted by sueQ:

@ Coookyman

Did you post the right link?

oh, oupsies ... no
thank you, I'll edit my post.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Seminole Wolf:

TThe average landfill in the US is about 600 acres, which is about 93% of a square mile. For those of you on the metric system, a square mile is about 2.6 square kilometers, which is slightly larger than a "city square" that you can buy in Cities:Skylines.

Your math is a little off. One tile is 2km x 2km or 4 sq. km. or ~1,000 acres.

But yeah, landfills can be ginormous, depending on the city(ies) feeding it. Our garbage dumps have been closed and moved way outside city limits and are feed by the whole county.

When I was in high school/college, I did a project on landfills in Japan. In the 50's the island of japan was overpopulated and almost all sea life was poisoned by pollution and almost no sealife to sustain the island. So the Japanese had to do some severe waste control to get the island back to life and help support itself. By the 80's they claimed they had most sea life back to normal (at least Tokyo bay).

but they showed how they made their landfills. They were in large valleys and lined with rubber, then the waste was filtered down to the plant below and filtered out all of the toxins and was putting out drinkable water. They didn't say what they did with the toxins or the waste of the garbage. but this was in the 80's and it was quote the technological advancement is waste control.

I don't think they do any of that up here where I live. It is more of let the land absorb the toxins and then make a new site when they think it is getting too toxic. Well, they have switch places to where they deliver it about once a decade. So there have been a few sites over the years.

[Seminole Wolf]

What a great conversation! Thank you all for your contributions.

So...Cookyman (or anybody, really), I'm not sure what you all are getting at when you say "decorate decorate decorate". I can see the harbor example you show, but I'm having difficulty translating that in my mind's eye to landfill. That doesn't sound like it gets me any closer to my desire of "50% reality".

Would it be possible to show an example of what you're getting at?

MarkJohnson, you're right, 2km X 2km is indeed 4 km squared. Thank you!

Everybody, so let's also consider the cemetery concept here too. I really think it fits here, because in the case of cemeteries AND landfills, we have the concept of providing storage for the byproducts of human society that need to be stored after the owner is done with them. Both require a lot of vertical and horizontal storage space, and for both, humans have figured out how to make use of the land after it can no longer serve to store new societal byproducts.

Have a scroll up and down this page [www.theguardian.com] to see some rather massive Hong Kong cemeteries. See how they actually "fit in" with the natural topography of the surrounding land? This is kind of the thing I'm looking for, for cemeteries at least. Landfills, which require an impermeable base, probably need to be built on flat ground, but when they're done and they've been repurposed, they can have their own unique topography. You probably just can't build houses on them; it probably needs to be a park or ponds, etcetera.

The difference of course, being that in-game, landfills show pollution while cemeteries don't. But once a landfill has been sealed and closed, why would we expect that it still pollutes? I would think if we're allowing fishing and hunting in those areas, they probably aren't a source of pollution any longer.

For cemeteries, I sure would like to be able to employ the use of a mountainside. Or create a massive underground mausoleum of sorts.

Another thing: I didn't know that Switzerland has zero waste going to landfills. I actually studied waste management in college (before I transferred to IT and went over to the Dark Side, that is!), so I kind of have my doubts.

There are some things that simply cannot be burned or recycled. The example given by another person above about sludge from the wastewater treatment process (which I also studied in college) applies here. Yes, much sludge can be used to generate methane gas which can be burned and used to make the wastewater treatment process not require so much fuel. But ultimately, there is always some leavings (I call it "slag", kind of like what the steel-making process generates) that simply will not break down any further and are not reusable for anything.

So the suspicious former-college scientist in me wants to ask, "just who is Switzerland pawning off their garbage to?" Because there's no way 100% of it can be recycled.

Anyway, great conversation. I'm all for a DLC for some of this stuff. We could call it "Trash 'n Stash". Or maybe "Murder Evidence Mounds", hehe!